Last month, we looked at four ways to maximize your freights value to your freight provider. The idea is simple; by increasing the value of your freight to the carriers, you also increase your leverage in pricing discussions. This month, we are going to cover ways to make your account more attractive to your freight carriers. By maximizing your company's overall value to your carrier's business, you gain negotiating power to meet your desired end: Reduced freight cost.
Make your freight as flexible as possible:
Your freight's packaging, stowability, and resistance to damage are always part of costing and pricing discussions. Carriers have a complex puzzle to manage each day; the pieces of that puzzle include: The mix of freight types, packaging types, customer specific requirements, commodity specific requirements, and transportation regulations
all within limited capacity.
Simple things like squaring off pallets, building standard size pallets (4x4x4), and ensuring your pallets are stackable are all ways to make your freight more flexible to
the carrier. The better your freight fits into the carrier's daily puzzle, the lower your impact will be on their operation. Lower impacts mean lower costs, and lower costs mean more available savings.
Work to take advantage of backhaul or empty miles:
Most LTL carriers in a hub and spoke system have a need to fill empty backhaul miles. If you can find ways to fill those backhaul or empty miles, you can help your carrier and get better rates on those moves. Sometimes this can be done with timing changes, vendor adjustments, or carrier adjustments. 
As capacity tightens, these opportunities are fewer; however, a discussion with your account manager may reveal some real savings potential for you and your carrier.
Send and receive information electronically:
Transportation has historically been a paper intensive business. We have invested in an IT infrastructure that will help us move away from paper to more electronic correspondence.
It's more than just invoicing. We do offer many electronic forms of invoicing such as 
EDI, PDF, and .xls billing; we also have Web Services to get you even more information. Web Services are programs that you can use to automate the retrieval of information such as freight status update and even importing freight documents. Web Services do require some technical set up on your end, but your investment should begin to pay off immediately once completed.
The benefit of electronic information sharing -- outside the reduction to our carbon footprint -- is the reduction of manpower required to manage the process manually. It helps free up our people to focus on other ways they can Bring Peace of Mind to you.
Pay well:
Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business, and with smaller margins, freight carriers are especially susceptible to cash pinch. A customer who pays on time and doesn't short pay is considered a valued business partner instead of a transactional customer.
The cost of collections and post delivery freight negotiations often times eats up the margins in your pricing. Carriers regularly see additional costs associated with shippers not knowing the needs of their consignees. When a bill incurs an additional 
charge, it will often cause discussion and delay in payment, which are both costly. By knowing what your customers require at delivery, you can reduce the delay in payment. As a carrier, we don't want you to have surprises, and we need to be compensated for services not covered in the base rates. Knowing your customers needs and planning for them helps keep the process moving forward.
Your account manager may have experience with some of your customers already and can help with this process if needed.
We know that your company may have internal forces or product limitations that might prohibit you from taking advantage of all of these ideas; our hope is that you can find one or two that will work for you. Please contact your Oak Harbor Account Manager to discuss how some of these creative solutions can help us Bring Peace of Mind to you.
